Another movie from the dramatic juggernaut that is Tyler Perry, providing another in a series of lessons in how to be black in America. Or at least, that’s how it seemed after watching this, Perry’s play adaptation that follows only a few months after his last effort, Why Did I Get Married? That one was about a group of upper-middle-class folks on a winter retreat, and this is about a struggling single mom, Brenda, played by Angela Bassett, but there are still certain things you can count on in a Tyler Perry movie. One, there will be a male lead who’s buff, single, and ready to devote himself to the female lead. Here that would be Rick Fox’s Michael, who also wants to coach her son, a gifted basketball player. He shows up in Chicago, then, in a marvelous coincidence, turns out to come from the same small Georgia town as Brenda’s dad, a man she never met. By contrast to Michael, there is the villain, Brenda’s ex, a deadbeat with no observable redeeming qualities. There is a mixture of comedy and drama, with the Chicago scenes are virtually all serious. The comedy takes place in Georgia, where Brenda and her kids have gone for the father’s funeral. Lots of offbeat relatives are there too. But most of all, there’s that emphasis on family, faith, and community that imbues all of Perry’s movies. “One thing a black woman knows how to do is make it” and “God will make a way” are the sort of aphorisms the characters deliver, which I guess is comfort food for Perry’s reliable audience. I don’t think God always makes a way, but it’s the predictability of His deliverance that makes the movie Perry’s least successful as a director. The humor feels more strained than in Why Did I Get Married? and the brief appearance of Perry’s drag-wearing Madea is a scene that could have, and should have, been excised.
IMDB link
viewed 3/22/08; reviewed 3/27/08
No comments:
Post a Comment